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• Barriers to parental involvement in school life of a rural settlement in Szeklerland

  103-122

  Mária-Magdolna Szász

  Views:

  36

  This study examines the barriers of parental involvement in school life through a sample of a rural settlement in Szeklerland, using the six areas of parental involvement discussed by Epstein (1987). In the study area, the actual process of parental involvement in the Epsteinian sense is in its initial stages. Although behaviours that can be categorised as school-parent cooperation are emerging, conscious parent-school cooperation is not yet characteristic.

• Parents’ school volunteering in the interpretation of teachers in a disadvantaged region of Hungary

  28-48

  Hajnalka Fényes

  Valéria Markos

  Zsófia Kocsis

  Elek Fazekas

  Views:

  3

  In the international literature, there are many studies dealing with the voluntary work of parents at school, but there is little research on this in Hungary. In our study, we examine the volunteering of parents through the interpretation of teachers in three disadvantaged counties of Hungary, using a qualitative interview method. The research population was the teachers of primary and secondary schools, and the interviewed teachers were selected by multi-stage, stratified sampling. We included 38 interviews in the analysis, in which the voluntary work of the parents appeared. The interviews were analysed by manual and machine hybrid coding. According to our results, teachers also considered participation on request or under pressure as volunteering. “Real” volunteering is hardly present, and parents are less likely to initiate assistance on their own. Parents are typically occasional volunteers, and mostly the members of the parents’ work community participate in regular volunteer work. According to the teachers, the voluntary work of parents is indispensable in the life of the school, so in our opinion it would be important to promote it and to motivate parents to participate more in school life.

• Types of fathers’ home-based and school-based involvement based on an interview study

  119-139

  Zsolt Csák

  Views:

  95

  In this study, we examine fathers’ home-based and school-based involvement to assist the development and achievement of their children. The international literature suggests that fathers are less involved than mothers, and the form of their involvement is also different. However, their home-based and school-based involvement has been shown to have similar positive effects on children’s educational outcomes. We examine the forms of parental involvement based on the typology created by Epstein and Sanders. In our empirical work, we conducted 14 semi-structured interviews with fathers with young children and aimed to delineate father types based on the forms of involvement by conducting a classification of the interviews. Our results show that the first group of fathers are only involved at home; they do not participate in school-related events with their child but report being actively involved in their child’s education and school-related activities at home. Fathers in the second group, on the other hand, are involved not only at home but also in school life. The third type is made up of divorced fathers who, with one exception, are involved at school and at home, which is consistent with the findings in the literature on single fathers with children. In this study, we also attempt to answer the question of how to increase fathers’ school-based involvement. According to the interviewees’ answers, their activity could be encouraged through support from their wife, greater self-confidence, and events organised by schools which are more suited to fathers (sports events, cooking together).